Instead of merely being connected to all things, we also now know that all things on earth
and even in the cosmos at large co-evolve – a fact solidly grounded in the physical and
mathematical study of flow networks and central to Smuts’ theory of
holism. Consequently, as pre-eminent systems scientist Stuart Kauffman
explains, “We live in a universe, biosphere, and human culture (including
economy) that are not only emergent, but radically creative. This is a
central part of the new scientific worldview.” Consequently, Kauffman
continues, “like the biosphere, the global economy is a self-consistently,
co-constructing, ever-evolving, emergent whole.”52
The hard science of holism even helps us debunk some of the
unexamined assumptions mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. We
now know, for example, that: